Tag: Tony Brooks

Model gets Muzzle

Westmoreland model gets a muzzle

Westmoreland model gets a muzzle

Dave and Tony Brooks are making some good progress on the major components of the Westmoreland model’s rigging. It seems they are raiding their ladies’ jewellery boxes for some realistically sized chain. Brave lads!

 

As Dave says, “We have now hung the sprit complete with muzzle and stanliff. It swings like the real thing. We have a temporary stayfall to ensure the mast stays upright. We also have a fid for the topmast so we can house that as well. Stayfall Tackle and shrouds are next. Got to come up with a way to make little dead eyes”.

 

Incidentally, I think I never posted an earlier update from Dave dated 13th Feb, as follows, “Even though it was extremely cold we managed to move the model forward tonight. We have now permanently fitted our home made anchor having raided Dad’s wife’s jewellery box for a better chain. We also have bow badges that are as yet not painted. We fitted a bracket to the stem post for the anchor to chain to pass through and have put three turns of chain around the windlass. All that remains is for a small anchor chain box to be made which is housed just in front of the forward hatch.

Time to go upwards. We have now fitted all our ironwork to the sprit in readiness for the muzzle to be made and the sprit to be hung. All spars are now painted brown and we will soon be ready to start the real painstakingly fiddly job of standing rigging”.
Nice job, Lads!

Fine Detail

Model as at 4 Feb

Model as at 4 Feb

Dave and Tony Brooks are soldiering on with ‘our’ model of Westmoreland and Dave has sent me a couple of pics. I was so impressed by some of the fine detailing I have actually cropped a couple more pics out of one of these so that you can see the clever work which has gone in around the windlass and main mast case and, again, around the crab winches and steering gear.

 

Dave says in his email, “All the deck furniture is now finished. The two crab winches and the brail winch are now soldered together and stuck in place. All metal work for pinning the lee-boards is complete with the boards themselves temporarily hung. The paint scheme is roughly that of Eastwoods working colours but will need fine tuning if we can find some good colour pictures. We are now ready to start going upwards. We messed around with a bit of wire to form the stayfall, but we are still undecided as to how we will do this”.

 

It’s looking good, Dave.

A Miniature Chaff-Cutter

With the hull and major components now in place, our in-house modelling team of Dave and Tony Brooks are now getting down to details of deck furniture and so on. Dave takes up the story from the 22nd November. ”

Chaff cutter wheel in miniature.

Chaff cutter wheel in miniature. Model by Tony and Dave Brooks, Picture by DB

When we had finished last week Dad suggested that he would attempt to create a chaff cutter wheel.  I knew he wasn’t really looking forward to it and had resigned myself to using one of the watch cogs as a wheel, which would have looked wrong. I was amazed to see the result of his efforts. We have a genuine mini Westmoreland size chaff cutter wheel.

So if we have a wheel we will need something for it to turn. Time to look at the rudder and how we are going to fit it to the barge. The main post is made from balsa wood and the blade from pine. We opted for four small pieces of drilled brass, two inserted in the stern post and two in the rudder post. Getting the gudgeon pin to line up was a task and it reminded me of when we put Cambria’s rudder on for the first time. Indeed we were thwarted that day until some adjustments were made to the hinges.

Model Rudder

Model Rudder; Westmoreland model by Tony and Dave Brooks; Picture by DB

One of Westmoreland’s distinctive features is her rubbing bands on her bow and to finish off last night we fitted them in readiness to give our hull its first coat of black paint. During the week a little more cleaning up will be taking place and who knows we may get that coat of black on next session.”

 

I’m impressed you guys!

Incidentally, Dave also tells me that there is now a nice video of the Medway Match 2012 available as a DVD through the Edith May website. You will recall that Cambria won her class in that race and Dave tells me that there is some nice footage of Cambria in the film. The DVD is £12.50 from the merchandise section of the Edith May website at http://www.edithmaybargecharter.co.uk/shop/category/merchandise/ . Nice Christmas present idea?

Loose Ends

A bitty old post today as I catch up a few loose ends.

Newspaper Cutting

Newspaper Cutting showing the Pihama Girls receiving their award from HRH Princess Anne; Photo from Faversham Times Thurs Nov 15th 2012

First  up, those Pihama Girls got themselves into at least three Kentish local papers (The Faversham Times, The Faversham Gazette (Kent Messenger) and the Ashford Kent Messenger with this nice picture and a good write up including comment from their School Headmaster, David Anderson.

 

2nd, David Rye, former “Occasional Contributor”, fast becoming “Regular Contributor” has found some more good links, including the next two sections of that instructional video on sailing the square rigger Solandet at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlRbcTsm2rc&feature=youtu.be (Part 2)

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3jU9Xz_GHE&feature=youtu.be (Part 3)

plus some nice assorted sailing vessels on

and then the moving of a big chunk of a new Aircraft carrier by sea on

HMS Queen Elizabeth prepares to depart Rosyth side by side with HMS Prince of Wales - May 2019

 

And, last but not least, the latest from SB Westmoreland modelers, Dave and Tony Brooks who tell us that by,

“14th November. An undercoat has been applied to the hull to show up any major blemishes, then final touches applied to our windlass and yet more cleaning up.  After this we decided to take a look at the mainmast furniture, namely the hounds and topmast cap that take the cross trees and house the topmast. Careful manipulation of brass and we had something that looked remarkably like the real thing. The brass for the topmast cap was gently rolled around a bar and then soldered. Once they were finished we glued both pieces to our mast and while we were at it we squared off the bottom of the mast to fit the mast case”.

Thanks all of you. I will put some of Dave’s latest pictures of the model up over the next few days.

Update on the Model

Dave Brooks sends me an update on the model of Westmoreland currently being built by him self and his Father, Tony Brooks.

 

Westmoreland model now

‘Our’ SB Westmoreland model as at 1st Nov; Picture by Dave Brooks.

“With the 31st Oct passed and all holiday and family commitments completed,” he says, “we were back on with the model. Our rails were nicely glued down and positioned. A piece of veneer has been stuck over the transom in order to cover the end grain and give us a better painting surface.Also a stern post has been added in readiness to mount a rudder at a later stage. We have also completed the rails around the bow and the saddle chock and they are currently pinned and waiting for the glue to dry. Four tiny frames made from brass have been fashioned for our lee-board winches and offered up to the hull for sizing and look quite good. Cogs have been selected to finish them off later this week we hope.

The pictures show the rails all round, the lee-board winch frames are being drilled and also offered up to the hull”.
Thanks for that Dave and Tony. It’s looking good.

SB Glenmore

SB Glenmore model by Tony Brooks, Picture by Matt Care

SB Glenmore model by Tony Brooks, Picture by Matt Care

On my recent trip over to the UK to stay on Cambria, I was in Hoo with Dave B tracking down Ray Rush’s now restored and back-in-the-water Galway Hooker and I had the pleasure of being invited back to Dave’s Dad’s place to see the model that they are currently making of SB Westmoreland but also an older, completed model of SB Glenmore. Regular readers will know that Dave’s Great Granddad was Barge Master on the SM Glenmore, the famous George “Navvy” Brooks. Dave’s Father Tony built this model originally as a working model sail boat (obviously with a lot less detail) but then fell in love with it and was anxious that the fun and games on the pond in the park were causing it damage. He decided to change it into a display model, so added all the detail of rigging etc and now has it nicely on display in the living room in this glass case with a lovely brass plaque naming the barge and an old black and white photo of ‘Navvy’ himself hanging above it on the wall. It is a beautiful thing to have and to admire and especially given the family connection.

 

Thank you to Dave B and to Tony for allowing me to see it, photograph it and share it with the surfers on here.

Too Rough for the Wall

Hull Model

Hull Model for the Brooks father and son modelling project, Picture by Dave Brooks.

They tell me there’s been a small delay on getting the barge onto the wall and open to the public. You are ‘enjoying’ some rough ol’ weather at present, apparently and the crew returning the barge to Gravesend after the last charter were obliged to come alongside at the floating pontoon which would at least be going up and down at the same rate as they were, rather than the unforgiving concrete wall of St Andrew’s Wharf. There the barge stayed overnight and I understand that Skipper Ian Ruffles and Mate Ryan Dale found all the facilities on the pontoon shut up and gone away due to the bad weather and effectively had to ‘break’ out of the place (don’t worry, only in a good and non-damaging way) to go buy their dinner in town before ‘breaking’ back in to eat it. Apparently the barge may be moved and become open to the public Tuesday, weather permitting.

 

So meanwhile here is another picture of the barge model currently being rendered Westmoreland shaped by Dave Brooks and his Father, Tony Brooks.

 

Model Making

It’s all gone a bit quiet on the barge front at present and your blogger is fast running out of stories about the real barge to witter on about so, as I know that many of the readers dabble in a bit of modelling in the ‘close’ season, I thought it would be rather fun to relate a tale of an attempt to recreate SB Westmoreland in miniature, by Dave Brooks and his father, Tony B. Dave has offered to diarise his exploits. Here is the first section of that diary (for which thank you Dave and Tony). I will be interested to see how they got on, mainly because I also started and failed to complete a nice model (which was taken off my hands by a chum who has also got nowhere with it despite best intentions). I take my hat off to anyone who perseveres and finishes up with a display-able model, and I’ve seen some superb ones. Do please add your comments to these posts if you have any similar stories of failure or success.

Model

Model which may come to resemble SB Westmoreland; photo by Dave Brooks

Dave writes, ” Whilst working as a volunteer for the Cambria Trust during the Cambria’s rebuild at Faversham we would take our lunch time upstairs in Baltic House Standard Quay aka. The Cambria Visitor Centre. It was then that I noticed an unfinished barge model, which was a hull and some brass leeboards and mainmast and topmast. Every time I passed that unfinished model I thought it was sad that it never got finished. I enquired as to its origin and found that the model had been made by Boss of Volunteers Basil Brambleby for his kids to mess around with. The model sat on the shelf for three years until we had to vacate the visitor centre and Basil very kindly donated the hull to me. Of course I had grand notions to finish it and rig it so I brought it home and stuck it in the attic for a year whilst I contemplated just how I was going to achieve it.

Knowing my woodworking skills are non existent I knew I would have to enlist some help. So I asked my dad Tony Brooks who had already made a beautiful scale model of the Glenmore my Great Grandfathers barge if he fancied a project. Thankfully he agreed and asked me to bring the model over to him to have a look at.  Dad liked the model but then threw me as he decided that if he was going to do this project he wanted to work to a plan. Off he went to his book shelf and after thumbing through several books he found a plan of the Westmoreland. “We can use this to give us an idea about general sizes etc.” So the plan was scanned into his pc and dimensions taken from the model to produce a scale drawing of our hull.”

To be continued.

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